Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000
more votes than he should have received, according to statistical analysis conducted
by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, who released
a study on Thursday.

The researchers likened their report to a beeping smoke alarm and called on
Florida officials to examine the data and the voting systems in counties that
used touch-screen voting machines to provide an explanation for the anomalies.
The researchers examined the same numbers and variables in Ohio, but found no
discrepancies there.

Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers said, was not to attack the
results of the 2004 election in Florida, where Bush won by 350,000 votes, but
to prompt election officials and the public to examine the e-voting systems and
address the fact that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on the paperless
machines.

The analysis -- which hasn't been formally peer-reviewed, but was examined
by seven professors -- showed a discrepancy in the number of votes Bush received
in counties that used the touch-screen machines and counties that used other
types of voting equipment.

The researchers examined numerous variables that might have affected the vote
outcome. These included the number of voters, their median income, racial and
age makeup and the change in voter turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections.
Using this information, they examined election results for the Republican and
Democratic presidential candidates in the state in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to see
how support for those candidates and parties measured over eight years in Florida's
67 counties.

They discovered that in the 15 counties using touch-screen voting systems,
the number of votes granted to Bush exceeded the number of votes Bush should
have received -- given all of the other variables -- while the number of votes
that Bush received in counties using other types of voting equipment lined up
perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties.

The total number of excessive votes ranged between 130,000 and 260,000, depending
on what kind of problem caused the excess votes. The counties most affected
by the anomaly were heavily Democratic.

Sociology professor Michael Hout, who chairs the university's graduate Sociology
and Demography group, said the chance for such a discrepancy to occur was less
than 1 in 1,000.

"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration,
the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting
cannot be explained," he said in a statement. "There is just a trivial
probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference
is zero -- less than once in a thousand chances."

The three counties where anomalies were most prevalent were Broward, Palm Beach
and Miami-Dade. In Broward, statistical analysis showed Bush should have received
28,000 fewer votes this year than in 2000. In fact, he received 51,000 more
votes than expected, for a net gain of 81,000 votes.

In Palm Beach county, analysis showed that Bush should have received 8,900
fewer votes. But instead he gained 41,000. In Miami-Dade county he was expected
to gain votes, but by much less than he actually did. According to the researchers
he should have received only 18,400 more votes, but he actually received 37,000,
a gain of 19,300 beyond the expectation.

Both Broward and Miami-Dade counties use machines made by Election Systems
& Software, while Palm Beach county uses machines made by Sequoia Voting
Systems. No Florida counties used touch-screen machines made by Diebold Election
Systems, the company whose machines have received the most scrutiny over the
last year.

A representative for Election Systems & Software called the study "hypothetical."

"If you consider real-world experience, we know that ES&S' touch-screen
voting system has been proven in thousands of elections throughout the country,"
said Jill Friedman-Wilson. "Based on this solid track record -- as well
as the extensive testing process that is required before equipment may be used
in an election -- we are confident in the security, reliability and accuracy
of all of our voting systems."

Susan Van Houten, cofounder of Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform, was
not surprised by the Berkeley report.

"I've believed the same thing for a while that the numbers are screwy
and it looks like they proved it," Van Houten said.

Van Houten said her group had received a number of reports from voters who
said that when they voted for Kerry on the Sequoia machines, the review screen
showed that the vote had been cast for Bush. The review screen lets voters review
their choices before casting their ballot. Van Houten said she was concerned
that the same thing may have happened to many other voters who didn't carefully
check the review screen before casting their ballot.

"From the computer experts I spoke to, it’s relatively easy to program
something into the system so that only every 50th vote would automatically go
to Bush," Van Houten said. If this were the case, election officials would
be less likely to think there was a problem with the machine if only a few voters
noticed it.

Jenny Nash, press secretary for the Florida Department of State, said she would
not comment on a report that she had not yet read. She said Florida had been
using its current voting systems since 2002 and had "delivered hundreds
of successful elections using the systems."

"Florida has one of the most rigorous certification processes in the nation,"
Nash said. "After a system is certified for use ... then every single voting
systems is tested prior to the election, sealed, and then that seal is not broken
until Election Day. We have never had any reports from supervisors of machines
malfunctioning or of votes being lost."

Van Houten's group, which monitored polling places on Nov. 2, found that at
least 40 of 798 machines they monitored were unable to print out a final tally
tape at the end of the night. In Florida, poll workers are supposed to print
out two tallies from each machine -- one for county officials and another for
posting at the polls so that voters can see what the tallies were.

"In around 40 cases that didn't occur," Van Houten said. "I
personally observed that during the primary as well. A machine just went down
and flashed a message that it needed service repair. It didn't print out a tally."

Graduate students from Berkeley's Quantitative Methods Research Team launched
the research project after following debates in the blogosphere about possible
fraud in the election. After examining and discounting many other theories,
such as ones involving optical-scan machines in Florida, they decided to look
at counties that used touch-screen voting machines.

Touch-screen machines became the focus of much debate last year when computer
scientists who examined the systems released several reports showing that the
machines were vulnerable to hacking and vote manipulation. The testing and certification
process for approving voting systems has also been roundly criticized by computer
experts and voting activists as being inadequate.

The researchers would not speculate on possible causes for the vote discrepancies
in Florida; they said they would leave it to officials to figure that out.